OP: The Fine Art of Italian Cooking

Times Books, New York, 1989. Hardcover. Very Good. Signed expanded and updated edition.

In the canon of great Italian cookbooks, right alongside Marcella Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cook Book (1973), is Giuliano Bugialli’s The Fine Art of Italian Cooking (1977). Where Hazan is stern and opinionated in her direction, Bugialli instills confidence with casual, chatty authority.

Bugialli is generous with menu ideas—which also include wine suggestions—for the 300 some recipes, giving ample opportunity and temptation to try the lot. For example, you might serve a Montevertine Chianti Sodaccio with crostini al ginepro (chicken liver pate with seasoned with juniper berries), polenta con salsicce (polenta with sausage), and buccellato alle fragole (a dessert of stale sweet bread and strawberries macerated in sugar and wine). 

Alternatively, Fratelli Oddero Dolcetto d’Alba pairs with a dinner of zuppa di porri (leek soup), peposo (beef stew), insalata composta (a flexible salad of seasonal boiled vegetables dressed in olive oil), and crema zabaione (zabaione folded into whipped cream).

Very Good book block and case with a price-clipped, lightly shelfworn jacket. Remainder mark to the bottom edge. Black and white illustrations throughout. A signed copy of the 1989 expanded and updated edition.